marries this fellow than if she never gets married at all.’
‘She has never even suggested marrying him,’ protested the husband. ‘I expect he is merely a college friend or fellow politician. She talks to him quite coldly, as though she does not even like him.’
‘Are you blind, Ogo? She cannot keep her eyes from the fellow and when she looks at him it is as though there is not another person in the world. Of course she is thinking of marrying him.’
‘I can’t see there’s all that much wrong with him,’ the husband said. ‘His face is rather scarred but Shivarani said he got the wound because he was saving her life in Naxalbari.’
‘It’s not the scar,’ snapped Meena impatiently. ‘That is not the problem though it is certainly unsightly.’
‘I agree he’s a big young fellow, but that’s OK too, I should have thought. Till now the men have always been too short.’
‘He’s a dalit, Ogo. How is it possible that you could not see? He may be well-spoken and educated, but anyone can see from the blackness of his skin that he is an outcaste.’
The zamindar gave a farewell party for his departing manager during which he told Shivarani, ‘Pandu will be managing the estate from now on and I will not be employing anyone so the bungalow will be empty. You are welcome to take it over as your home if you wish.’
Shivarani was touched. When her parents told her that they were leaving the country she had felt worried for she did not have enough money to rent a place in Calcutta. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That really takes a big weight from my mind.’
Pandu was so busy with his cows these days that he hardly noticed the matter of Shivarani’s friend or even the departure to Canada of his parents-in-law. His Jersey herd were causing great excitement in Hatipur. The local cows were sharply horned and half the size. Daily crowds gathered at the byre to look at the new cows, asking each other, ‘Are they buffaloes?’ Bending to peer at the Jersey udders, which were four times bigger at least than those of the local cows, they would emit gasps of wordless wonder. They stared, stunned with awe, as the mighty steaming buckets of yellow milk given by these Billaty cows were carried from stall to dairy. They had never seen anything like it. ‘We are lucky to get three cups a day from one of ours. These creatures are not of this world, but are provided by the gods,’ came the eventual village pronouncement. Pindu feared that these compliments were bringing down curses from an envious deity for each month there came a new bovine disaster, sending Pandu dashing to the gwala for advice. But these foreign cows did not react to the local medicines of turmeric, tamarind, and mustard oil. They developed sicknesses that the gwala had never seen. Three cows died of redwater. The cowman passed cow pox from teat to teat till all were too sore and lumpy to be milked. The heaviest yielder got mastitis and was treated with antibiotics squeezed up into her teats from a tube after which her milk was undrinkable for two weeks. Three quarters of the calves were male and were distributed among local farmers to be used as plough-pullers, till no more were needed and still more male calves were born.
‘In the West these surplus animals would be used for meat,’ sighed Pandu, ‘but here in our Hindu land I cannot think of an answer. There seems no end to the problems.’
At first it was difficult to sell the milk. The people of Bengal were used to pure white buffalo milk and looked on the golden cream of Jersey milk with suspicion. Eventually Arjuna’s father found a dairy in Calcutta which catered to a sophisticated sort of Memsahib. But after only a month of the arrangement there was a blockade. The Naxalites closed the road for a week in protest at one of theirs being murdered. The blockade was lifted. Pandu tried to get the milk into town again but on the following day the group who had committed the murder closed the roads in retaliation for the retaliation.
Pandu lost the market in Calcutta.
Before he bought the cows, Pandu had gone to see his friend, the minister for dairy development.
‘A government chilling tanker will collect your milk once it reaches a hundred litres,’ he was told.
Day after day, as the quantity rose, the hope of government salvation drew closer. At last the day came. A hundred litres was in the tank. Pandu contacted his friend, the minister.
It took a week of lost milk for Pandu to discover that the chilling tanker had been a figment of the minister’s hopeful imagination.
Pandu decided to deliver it to the chilling centre himself. This was at Barrackpur, on the outskirts of Calcutta, requiring the milk to be driven, unchilled, for four hours. They began milking the cows at three so as to get it to the centre before the sun rose and the weather grew hot.
At the end of the week Pandu went to collect his money. And found he had been fined for selling watered milk.
He protested, ‘I am with the milk from the moment it is taken from the cows to the moment I deliver it to you. There is no way water could have got in.’
‘Perhaps the cows are not of sufficient quality,’ suggested the manager.
‘These are Jersey cows. Their milk is the creamiest in Europe.’
‘Ah, Billaty cows, I have heard of this being a problem. Their milk is very low in butterfat.’
A government official was sent to test the milk at the moment of milking. He pronounced it well within the desired range. ‘Good for a Billaty cow,’ he said. ‘Though of course the milk of a desi cow is much higher in butterfat.’
Pandu returend to the chilling centre with his milk and once again was penalised.
This time the manager looked sympathetic. ‘You see, the system is that there are fellows putting water into their milk and taking credit from others.’
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